Chemical weapons confirmed in Iraq

[RACooper]

Well yes Mustard gas can remain viable for a long time (it's why French are still so careful cleaning up stuff from WWI), as well as other weapons.... however some (such as Sarin) or biological weapons have higher storage requirements to maintain the "optimal" viability of the weapon... for example a lot of nerve agents are finicky, if stored improperly they can become very unpredicatable.... I'm not saying that the weapons become safe after a set period of time... what I am saying is that they lose their military effectiveness after this time period becuase of the unpredicatablity of the results and quality of the chemical materials (ie. you gotta open the thing up to see if it's still effective) or that the storage/delivery vector is no longer viable (ie. the shells rusted through, or seals have been comprimised).

I suggest people that are interested should look up articles on the problems that the US Army Corp of Engineers is having storing/disposing some of the Cold War stockpiles in the south and mid-west. I'll see if I can find some links or some of my old material from NCBW training...

[Love_Spell_6]

NEW YORK — Tests on an artillery shell that blew up in Iraq on Saturday confirm that it did contain an estimated three or four liters of the deadly nerve agent sarin (search), Defense Department officials told Fox News Tuesday.

"A little drop on your skin will kill you" in the binary form, said Ret. Air Force Col. Randall Larsen, founder of Homeland Security Associates. "So for those in immediate proximity, three liters is a lot," but he added that from a military standpoint, a barrage of shells with that much sarin in them would more likely be used as a weapon than one single shell.

The soldiers displayed "classic" symptoms of sarin exposure, most notably dilated pupils and nausea, officials said. The symptoms ran their course fairly quickly, however, and as of Tuesday the two had returned to duty.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120268,00.html

[Jadey28]

RACooper is correct. I am a bit more knowledgable about mustard, but I did some research at work on GB (sarin). Sarin is stable when pure ~ as RACooper mentioned, you have to open up the "container" in order to determine it's purity. Sarin stabilized with another chemical can be stored in steel containers for long periods of time at temperatures up to 70 degrees C, but unstablized materials tend to build-up pressure within a few weeks. Sarin will begin to attack tin, magnesium, cadmium-plated steel and some aluminum. Slightly attack copper, brass, and lead; practically no attack on 1020 steels, Inconel, and K-monel. (All information courtesy of Edgewood Chemical Biological Center Department of the Army, MSDS).

I am beginning to think that there might be a stockpile of WMDs somewhere underground in the Middle East. As we learned while hunting for Sadaam, there are several passage-ways to travel 'below' the surface of the land. It isn't difficult to create a mobile lab/storage area that can be moved from place to place. I'm sure we have searched high and low to find such things, but there are always places that people don't know about. I just hope we discover everything before it's too late.

[RACooper]

Some "stockpiles" might be the ammo-dumps from the Iran/Iraq War... numerous chemical related stockpiles have been found in Iraq that relate to this period.... gas-masks, chemical suits, badly rusted mortars or shells. It would be interesting to see if a manufacture date would be released after examining the shells used recently by insurgents... i'm of the opinion that they dug up one of the dumps from the war.

[justamom]

Originally posted by ktsnake
One moves them to Syria and buries them where US troops aren't able to look.

Cavuto reported this last night. He said Bush KNOWS where they are-has known where they are. They are hoping once the Iraqi
govt is in place, they will demand their return.

Yes, these people probably stumbled upon a stock pile. Sadam had all the war heads painted so there wouldn't be a distinction between one filled with chemicals or your ordinary, everyday bomb.

Does it REALLY matter WHEN the bombs were created? What matters is they were to be destroyed. They weren't. They are still deadly and pose a risk. The one that detonated was said to have enough to kill over a 1000 people. From what I UNDERSTAND (limited) it needed the spin of the launch to break the cylanders inside to mix prior to explosion. JADEY???

[RACooper]

Yes, your right about the spinning... actually all (or most, don't know about copperheads) artillery shells need to spin a certain number of times to arm...its a built in safety feature to protect the gunners.

It DOES matter when they were created though... if they are relics of the Iran-Iraq War then they could be "lost" weapons... the front was mostly stable, but it was fluid enough at times that positions were overrun, it's why Saddam used the weapons in the first place (much like the Germans in WWI). The problem is this: sometimes positions were overrun and the shells were lost to the enemy, other times issurgents attacked and captured weapons and ammo from Iraq too (Saddam had problems too). So the weapon could have been under Saddam's control, or it could have been one stolen by insurgents, or it could have been one stolen by a terror-group.

These insurgents (whether Kurdish sepratists or Islamic fundamentalists/fanatics - think of Al Queda like groups) caused enough problems the Saddam attacked them in force too... this is when he used chemical weapons on the Kurds... in an effort to counter the guerrila war along the northern border region; but a guerrila war is very fluid, and the guerrilas had some successes that could acount for their capture of chemical weapons (Janes reported that guerrilas even captured a Hind at one point).

That is why determining the manufacture date is importnant.. you then have a better chance of determining the history of the weapon and where/whom it came from.

[DeltAlum]

Cavuto is on FOX.

Sorry, but this report flies in the face of what the US Spokesgeneral on the scene reported. You would think that the Army, if anyone, would want to make a big deal of this if it were true.

I know this will bring screams of Liberal Press bias, but I looked at the websites for NBC, CBS, ABC, The NY Times, LA Times, Chicago Trib, Washington Post and a couple others, and no mention. (Granted, it was a cursory look at each).

You simply have to believe that if this story was any kind of big deal, they would be all over it. None of these are going to sit around and let FOX scoop them on this kind of thing -- even if they were owned by John Kerry. Just wouldn't happen.

Until someone proves otherwise, I'm going to believe what the Army says -- that this is probably an old, overlooked shell that was found by terrorists who didn't realize what it was and decided to use it as a roadside bomb.

If the next few roadside bombs contain serin, mustard, etc., then I'll consider changing my mind.

[justamom]

Sounds rather convincing to me, but I guess it's one of those situations where, "We shall see, what we shall see."


http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles...e.asp?ID=13282

Iraqi WMDs, Now in Syria

By Larry Elder
Townhall.com | May 6, 2004

"ELDER...So, I interviewed terrorism expert John Loftus, who once held some of the highest security clearances in the world. Loftus, a former Army officer, served as a Justice Department prosecutor. He investigated CIA cases of Nazi war criminals for the U.S. attorney general. Author of several books, Loftus once received a Pulitzer Prize nomination"


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Iraqi WMDs, Now in Syria

By Larry Elder
Townhall.com | May 6, 2004

"Week after week after week after week," said Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., about President Bush's rationale for going to war with Iraq, "we were told lie after lie after lie after lie." Were we?

Jordan recently seized 20 tons of chemicals trucked in by confessed al-Qaeda members who brought the stuff in from Syria. The chemicals included VX, Sarin and 70 others. But the media seems curiously incurious about whether one could reasonably trace this stuff back to Iraq. Had the terrorists released a "toxic cloud," Jordanian officials say 80,000 would have died!

So, I interviewed terrorism expert John Loftus, who once held some of the highest security clearances in the world. Loftus, a former Army officer, served as a Justice Department prosecutor. He investigated CIA cases of Nazi war criminals for the U.S. attorney general. Author of several books, Loftus once received a Pulitzer Prize nomination.


Excerpt-
John Loftus: There's a lot of reason to think (the source of the chemicals) might be Iraq. We captured Iraqi members of al-Qaeda, who've been trained in Iraq, planned for the mission in Iraq, and now they're in Jordan with nerve gas. That's not the kind of thing you buy in a grocery store. You have to have obtained it from someplace.

Larry Elder: They couldn't have obtained it from Syria?

Loftus: Syria does have the ability to produce certain kinds of nerve gasses, but in small quantities. The large stockpiles were known to be in Iraq. The best U.S. and allied intelligence say that in the 10 weeks before the Iraq war, Saddam's Russian adviser told him to get rid of all the nerve gas. It would be useless against U.S. troops; the rubber suits were immune to it. So they shipped it across the border to Syria and Lebanon and buried it. Now, in the last few weeks, there's a controversy that Syria has been trying to get rid of this stuff.

They're selling it to al-Qaeda is one supposition. We know the Sudanese government demanded that the Syrian government empty its warehouse in Khartoum where they've been hiding illegal missiles along with components of Weapons of Mass Destruction. But there's no doubt these guys confessed on Jordanian television that they received the training for this mission in Iraq. . . And from the description it appears this is the form of nerve gas known as VX. It's very rare, and very tough to manufacture . . . one of the most destructive chemical mass-production weapons that you can use. . . They wanted to build three clouds, a mile across, of toxic gas. A whole witch's brew of nasty chemicals that were going to go into this poison cloud, and this would have gone over shopping malls, hospitals . . . .

Elder: You said that the Russians told Saddam, "There is going to be an invasion. Get rid of your chemical and biological weapons."

Loftus: Sure. It would only bring the United Nations down on their heads if they were shown to really have Weapons of Mass Destruction. It's not generally known, but the CIA has found 41 different material breaches where Saddam did have a weapons of mass destruction program of various types. It was completely illegal. But no one could find the stockpiles. And the liberal press seems to be focusing on that.

Elder: It seems to me that this is a huge, huge story.

Loftus: It's embarrassing to the (press). They've staked their reputations that this stuff wasn't there. And now all of a sudden we have al Qaeda agents from Iraq showing up with Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Elder: David Kay said, in an interim report, that there was a possibility that WMD components were shipped to Syria.

Loftus: A possibility? We had a Syrian journalist who defected to Paris in January. The guy is dying of cancer, and he said, "Look, my friends in Syrian intelligence told me exactly where the stuff is buried." He named three sites in Syria, and the Israelis have confirmed the three sites. They know where the stuff is, but the problem is that the United States can't just go around invading Arab countries. . . We know from Israeli and defectors' intelligence that the son of the Syrian defense minister was paid 50 million bucks to bring the stuff across the border and bury it.

[DeltAlum]

Originally posted by justamom
"We shall see, what we shall see."

Exactly. There may be WMD's somewhere, but I just haven't seen and really convincing proof yet. So far, everything has been from someone with an obvious agenda.

Believe me, if quantities of nerve gas are ever found, ALL of the media will be all over it like stink on...well you know.